Kinetically Controlled Fabrication of C₆₀ 1-Dimensional Crystals

Considering the current application of fullerenes in the field of organic semiconductor devices, the highly crystalline or single crystal fullerene nanostructures with controlled shape and size contains some breakthrough for improved efficiency. Recently, fullerene 1-dimensional nanostructures, including nanowhiskers and nanotubes, become attractive kind of materials since the development of liquid–liquid interface precipitation (LLIP) process. The LLIP process has critical advantage; the fabrication of highly crystalline, even single crystal, fullerene 1-dimensional nanostructures with simple apparatus. However, the fabrication fullerene 1-dimensional structures by LLIP process requires long process time from one day to several days. In order to overcome this drawback, a modified process from conventional LLIP process is suggested. In the modified LLIP process, the nucleation step and growth step were divided. For the nucleation step, saturated fullerene solution is mixed with small amount of alcohols such as 2-propanol or ethanol. For the controlled growth step, the fullerenes in the nucleated solution are precipitated by addition of alcohol, which is injected to the bottom of the solution with controlled flow rate. In this modified process, the shape of the precipitated fullerene crystals is critically dependent on the nucleation steps and the size is dependent on the precipitation rate. By combination of proper nucleation step and growth rate, a well defined fullerene 1-dimensional structures, of 200∼500 nm width and of hundreds m length can be fabricated within two hours. In addition, by controlling injection rate and degree of supersaturation, several types of 1-dimensional structures including micro-tubes can be prepared and, by changing solvent and alcohol, several shape of C₆₀ crystals including polyhedral particles and plates can be prepared.